Writing.. is 90 percent listening. You listen so deeply to the space around you that it fills you, and when you write, it pours out of you.. You don't only listen to the person speaking to you across the table, but simultaneously listen to the air, the chair, and the door. And go beyond the door. Take in the sound of the season, the sound of the color coming in through the windows. Listen to the past, future, and present right where you are. Listen with your whole body, not only with your ears, but with your hands, your face, and the back of your neck. Natalie Goldberg
Some Similar Quotes
  1. It's like I get into a roller coaster, and sit there while it goes up and down and upside down and sometimes I get thrown out and I hit my head, but I crawl back in again and the moment I'm back in, it just... - C. Joybell C.
  2. Blessed are the weird people: poets, misfits, writersmystics, painters, troubadoursfor they teach us to see the world through different eyes. - Jacob Nordby
  3. If everyone could be a successful and rich author, there would be no point in working so hard. Where is the fun in that? - L.A. Jones
  4. I hope I don't write TOO many books! When I look at authors who have written too many books, I wonder to myself "When did they live?" I certainly want to write BECAUSE I live! I know I don't want to write in order to... - C. Joybell C.
  5. I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this., New York Times, April 19, 1992] - Cormac McCarthy
More Quotes By Natalie Goldberg
  1. The things that make you a functional citizen in society - manners, discretion, cordiality - don't necessarily make you a good writer. Writing needs raw truth, wants your suffering and darkness on the table, revels in a cutting mind that takes no prisoners...
  2. Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.
  3. We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded. This is how writers must think, this is how we must sit down with pen in hand. We were here; we are human beings; this is how...
  4. No matter what a person does to cover up and conceal themselves, when we write and lose control, I can spot a person from Alabama, Florida, South Carolina a mile away even if they make no exact reference to location. Their words are lush like...
  5. Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure.
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